Shattered Kingdoms

Decided to make a thread that could benefit both you and other new players we get from Top Mud Sites. I encourage other veterans to post their own tips or corrections (if they feel I have made an error). Please remember to keep it broad/general and do not post any in-character information.

While you can gain experience through RP (enlightenment) and casting spells outside of combat, these tips will focus primarily on how to maximize the experience you gain from combat. Experience works differently on Shattered Kingdoms than other MUDs, with the experience you receive being directly linked to the damage your character inflicts during combat. Experience is not split evenly among group members when a monster dies, like on other MUDs. To paraphrase Dulrik, you get rewarded for the work you do.

What does this mean? It means you want to do as much damage as possible while taking as little in return to maximize the amount of experience that you earn. High charisma and grouping also grant bonus experience. However, I would caution you to be wary with whom you group. Especially, if you play a caster class. If you group with a melee class, you will likely see the experience that you earn drop dramatically, since they tend do more damage and their damage is more sustainable than yours.

Keep in mind that these suggestions are mostly for new players:

1. Train charisma. Yes, it will mean less points to train other stats like mana, HP, or art, but if you are new to SK it will make leveling more enjoyable and you can always pick up extra stat trains via mentoring. If you decide that you are going to train charisma, train it FIRST so you get the most benefit out of it.

2. Group intelligently. Whenever possible, you should group with other characters since it will award bonus experience. However, be careful not to group with someone that will overwhelm your character's damage or you will actually gain less experience.

A good rule of thumb: If you play a caster, group with other casters since you are both limited by the same resource (mana) and will need to rest at roughly the same intervals. If you play melee, you can group with anyone - a priest or shaman is usually best, but keep in mind that you will drain a significant portion of their experience.

3. Always have a pet. If you don't need a pet to tank for your character, keep it positioned behind you in case you run into something unexpected that might kill you. The pet can be ordered to rescue even if your character is bashed/prone.

4. If you play a caster, try to anticipate ticks so that you can always sleep for mana. On a related note, you want to regenerate as much mana as possible per tick, so be sure to learn meditation and trance as high as possible - ask around in-character for help, if you can't find the better trainers.

5. If you play a caster, wear a shield. You will almost always be in the second or third rank (behind the pet that you should always have) and the monsters you fight will throw rocks, daggers, spears and other projectiles at your character. A shield will help reduce the damage you take even without the shield block skill.

6. Always carry a recall potion. This sort of ties into tip #3 - nothing will slow down your experience more than dying, especially if you die when there is no one around to resurrect your character. If you get into a bad situation, order your pet to rescue (if you are bashed/prone) and quaff recall. If you are not bashed/prone, simply quaff the recall potion.

If you don't have a recall potion, make friends with a shaman or priest. The potion is easy to brew and most clergy types won't mind. I always use an alias for recall potions: #ALIAS word {quaff recall;get recall @container}

7. If you are good, fight evil monsters. If you are evil, fight good monsters. You get bonus experience, if you do. If you are neutral - fight anything you want, as the monster's alignment won't matter.

8. There are lots and lots of zones on Shattered Kingdoms and usually several that are appropriate for any given level range. Ask around in-character where your character should be "hunting". I typically stay in an area until I hit yellow familiarity and then move on, since at that point you are actually getting a slight experience penalty for killing monsters.

9. If you play a melee class, there are vendors in several cities that sell tanso steel armor. For leveling, it is very useful and I highly recommend you invest in purchasing a set. I also recommend finding a friendly sorcerer and asking for speed enchants on your weapon. With enough speed, you can get an extra attack per round. If you can't find a friendly sorcerer to help, a priest can also consecrate for accuracy and damage, which are not bad either.

10. Make friends and be sociable - this is probably more important than any other tip. Friends can help you level, especially if their character is already Grand Master. They can also help you get into factions that have skills/spells that can speed up leveling, too. Don't be that guy that gets to GM and has no one on the who list greeted.

Lastly, have fun.

Are you sure neutral characters get the same XP from neutral monsters that they do from monsters with extreme alignments? Also, you should include something about the consider command. It's generally not great to fight things that consider as anything less than a tough challenge unless that's literally your only option. The only other minor quibble I have is that I'm not sure +speed is better than +damage for purposes of leveling. If you can do the same damage in 3 hits that you could do in 4 hits with a faster weapon, when it comes to pure XP grnding, it's better to use the slower weapon to preserve your move so you don't have to rest as often. Obviously if you have access to a priest to help you level this is inconsequential, but for a solo fighter or for a group with nobody to refresh it could make a difference. If you have yet to master fourth attack or your weapon skills, the faster weapon has the ancillary benefit of improving those faster, but for pure XP/time a slower, more damaging weapon may be better.

Actually only lighties gain bonus xp for killing darkies. Darkies can kill anything....

Not true. Evil gains more experience for killing good, although not as much as good gets for killing evil. But evil can also gain some XP for killing evil, whereas good gets nothing for killing good.

That's really interesting, I actually never knew that.

Better to be darkie then.

Not when you consider all the high level training areas filled with darkie NPCs.

I just leveled a darkie. It's a piece of pie, easy as cake.

Selfish aligned characters do not get any bonus experience based on monster alignment, but evil and good characters can - evil for killing good aligned monsters and good for killing evil aligned monsters (confirmed by Dulrik).

Speed is far better than damage, unless you are wielding a really fast, but low damage weapon - like a sai or epee. However, since this particular tip is aimed primarily at barbarians and mercenaries - they should be using slow, hard hitting weapons and speed is king. It is of way greater benefit than either accuracy or damage.